[PRCo] Re: Marietta, Ohio local service

[Fred Schneider]

Right.




On Nov 28, 2011, at 4:23 PM, Dwight Long wrote:

> 
> Fred
> 
> I think you mean the last LOCAL cars in Marietta ran in 1934.
> 
> Trams from Parkersburg still came upriver and into Marietta for about 12-13 
> years longer.
> 
> Dwight
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: "Pittsburgh Railways" <pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org>
> Cc: "Bruce Wells" <cuzinbruce at verizon.net>
> Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 3:05 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Marietta, Ohio local service
> 
> 
>> Regarding car 30 and its siblings in Marietta, Ohio ....
>> This was one of those curious small town systems which perhaps should 
>> never have been built and lasted longer than it probably should have. 
>> It's longevity was probably similar to West Penn Railways in that we 
>> cannot get rid of it because too many people connect it with the power 
>> company and we might be evil if we did away with it even it the sucker is 
>> losing money hand over fist.
>> 
>> Marietta is a city which has had a remarkably stable population for more 
>> than a century.  In 1900 there were 13,348 people enumerated in the 
>> census.   It peaked at 16,861 in 1970 and there are still 14,085 in 2010. 
>> Why?  I suspect that the presence of Marietta College has a lot to do with 
>> it.   For those who do not understand, the U. S. Census Bureau counts 
>> college students at school if the school is in session on April 1st of the 
>> census year.   (I have seen some crazy swings in small town numbers if 
>> spring break happened hit during the census.)   Today the college has 1417 
>> full-time students ... that's about 10% of the city population.
>> 
>> (By the way, for those unfamiliar ... there are other anomalies such as 
>> this that you need to understand in evaluating populations.   Think of 
>> other institutional populations.   Let's use Centre County, Pennsylvania 
>> as an example of a county with huge institutional populations.   The 2010 
>> census showed 153,990 people.   Of those, 44,817 were full-time students 
>> at Penn State.   Another 256 were confined to the Centre County 
>> Correctional Facility.   And about 2,100 more were locked up in the 
>> Rockville facility of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections.   That 
>> leave 40% of the population actually potentially in the labor force ... 
>> and we can reduce it even farther by the time we take out the old people 
>> and those in hospitals.)
>> 
>> Did the college contribute materially to the trolley riders?   Probably 
>> not because it was south of 5th and Putnam back in that era; today it 
>> encompasses a big chunk of the area bounded by 4th, Putnam, 7th and Greene 
>> Sts.   It was only a few blocks from downtown.   The theaters were on 
>> Putnam between 3rd and 2nd.   Downtown for a college kid was within 
>> walking distance.
>> 
>> What industries that existed were in the northeast along the Pennsylvania 
>> Railroad and up the Muskingum along the B&O.   There used to be a chair 
>> factory on 7th many years ago (without a rail siding) but it has long 
>> since become a part of the college.
>> 
>> That residential loop up to Montgomery also served all the industries in 
>> the northeast.   It also served the poorer neighborhoods along the Ohio 
>> River northeast of downtown ... the Hart Street area.    I suspect it was 
>> busy briefly in the mornings to take the workers out to the northeast, and 
>> again in the afternoons to bring them home.
>> 
>> The photo that Herb attached of 30 was taken across from the carbarn on 
>> Greene Street at Warner.   All of those houses are still there.   This 
>> link shows all the houses in that picture.
>> 
>> http://maps.google.com/maps?q=greene+and+warner+sts.,+marietta,+ohio&hl=en&ll=39.417712,-81.429548&spn=0.010145,0.018754&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=42.445866,76.816406&vpsrc=0&hnear=Greene+St+%26+Warner+St,+Marietta,+Washington,+Ohio+45750&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=39.418699,-81.430847&panoid=N84KzV90ueqMZR4D3ke-uw&cbp=12,312.01,,0,-1.65
>> 
>> No damn it.   I'm not a know it all.   My father grew up in the area just 
>> outside the 3rd, Montgomery, 5th, Putnam trolley loop.   My grandparent's 
>> home was 612 Washington St., two doors south down from Washington and 7th. 
>> I walked all over Marietta as a teenager.
>> 
>> I can share some of the stories from my father....
>> 
>> 1)   If you went downtown to shop on Friday night, you didn't waste money 
>> on the trolley.   You walked.   Trolley fares were expensive.   You 
>> reserved that for the return trip when your laden down with packages and 
>> the kids were tired, ready for bed and rutchy.   Think about that.   If 
>> inflation is roughly equal to moving the decimal one place every 50 years, 
>> then going downtown with two kids and a wife .... four nickels each way 
>> ... why that's four $5 bills each way today.   Would you spend that if you 
>> were a working man?  NOT ON YOUR LIFE.   Every part of the residential 
>> part of that city served by the trolley was no more than a mile from 
>> downtown ....  you really want to spend that kind of money to drive 
>> downtown to shop?   Pittsburgh when its three or four miles, Yeah.   Small 
>> town, No.   OK ... I hear you.   Two of the kids may be under the fare 
>> paying age and riding free.   Still, are you going to pay $20 in today's 
>> money to save walking a mile into town and a mile bac!
>> k if you are working in a non-union job in a factory?   My granddad was a 
>> cabinet maker in a furniture factory ... that was the guy who fixed the 
>> defects.   If there was a dining room table with a bad leg, he made the 
>> new leg and fixed it so the table could be shipped.   He worked until age 
>> 75 because he needed the money.
>> 
>> So it was a marginal operation because it was in a small town where you 
>> could easily walk anywhere ... three cars and a spare older car for the 
>> West Marietta line and the dog-bone loop.   It is similar in scope to 
>> Warren, Columbia, Titusville, West Chester, Hanover, Lewistown, 
>> Huntingdon, Monessen, Meadville .... all those little towns that quit 
>> running in the 20s and 30s.
>> 
>> And it (and those like it) probably served only those people who 
>> absolutely could not walk.   So by the time we had a few automobiles, it 
>> was gone.
>> 
>> The last cars ran in 1934 in Marietta.
>> 
>> 2)   By the way, the interurban north to Beverly quit five years earlier 
>> in 1929.
>> 
>> 3)   You did not cross the Ohio River in the "olden days" without paying 
>> to do it.   The bridges were all toll bridges.   Or you paid to use a 
>> ferry.   In the 1940s and 1950s there were bridges at Wheeling, then a 
>> ferry Sistersville, a bridge at St. Marys (which was identical to the one 
>> at Point Pleasant which collapsed in the 1960s and which torn down after 
>> its pattern collapsed), a bridge at Marietta, a bridge a Parkersburg, a 
>> bridge a Point Pleasant and so forth.   The tolls tended to isolate one 
>> state from another.   My father remembered that Williamstown, WV and 
>> Marietta, OH were two separate and very distinct communities that existed 
>> totally independent of one another.   You didn't cross the river to shop 
>> because you had to pay to toll to drive across or even walk across until 
>> sometime in the 1940s or early 1950s.   Today?   Well I-77 crosses north 
>> of Marietta.   A new free highway bridge has been built on the piers of 
>> the old bridge between downtown Marietta and the v!
>> illage of Williamstown.   North of Marietta on Ohio route 7 is a lower 
>> grade shopping center ... the kid that has WalMart of KMart and Krogers or 
>> some food store and some chain drug store ... you get the idea.   And the 
>> big mall for the region today is south of half way between Marietta and 
>> downtown Parkersburg on the West Virginia side of the river.   And 
>> downtown Marietta is dead.
>> 
>> (The only bridge I can think of that is still toll on the upper Ohio River 
>> is the one at East Liverbile ... and if you ask for a receipt our used 
>> commuter tickets, the still read Newell Bridge and Railway Company.
>> 
>> 4)  If my grandmother went to visit her brother, who lived down in Pomery, 
>> she would take the B&O from Williamstown to Parkersburg and Mason, WVa. 
>> Then her brother would row the boat across the Ohio River and meet her and 
>> then take her back to his farm in the wagon.     My grandparents in 
>> Marietta only briefly had an automobile.   That was back when you didn't 
>> need a drivers license.   Grandpa gave up driving when he accidentally 
>> removed someone's porch with his Franklin and had to spend the summer 
>> rebuilding their home.   Until he died in 1960 he depended on either 
>> Marietta Bus Lines, friends or the Shoe Leather Express.
>> 
>> 5)  Did it ever occur to you that perhaps medicine has advanced too much? 
>> That maybe we keep people living too long?   I've had those discussions 
>> with a high school buddy who is a doctor (no it isn't Rich Allman).   Well 
>> here's a great one.   Marietta, Ohio did not have a hospital when my dad 
>> was a kid.   Marietta Memorial Hospital was established in 1929.   That 
>> was the year my father moved to Cleveland to work in the steel mill 
>> between his sophomore and junior years in college.   So if you needed 
>> surgery before 1929, how did you do it?   Well, when my dad was a lad he 
>> had his appendix removed .... IN THE DOCTORS OFFICE.   That was probably 
>> about the time of World War I.    They did have anesthesia then.   The 
>> doctor knocked the kid out with chloroform.   Then he handed the 
>> chloroform soaked rag to my grandpa and said, "If he moves, put it back 
>> over his nose quickly."   Well, he survived.   I'm here to talk about it. 
>> I had mine removed in Bellevue Hospital (suburban Pit!
>> tsburgh) in 1953 and got a two week extension of my Easter school 
>> vacation.   Now days it's day surgery and home the same day!
>> 
>> 6)   If you have the CERA book on West Penn Traction, you will notice a 
>> lot of pictures credited to S. Durward Hoag.   Durward didn't take them. 
>> He was a collector.   A local historian.   He was a stringer for the 
>> Marietta Times who wrote the bygone memories column for the newspaper for 
>> many years.   I think his entire collection might be in the Marietta 
>> College today.   I know that when Harry Fischer, who owned a local photo 
>> studio, sold the place, Hoag was instrumental in getting all the steam 
>> boat pictures that Fischer had taken moved to the college library.
>> 
>> 7)   I wish I could remember her name.   Ohio used to have a system where 
>> all the school kids had to buy their own text books.  My father worked as 
>> a school kid in a store in Marietta which sold text books to the high 
>> school and college kids.   Dad once told me ... and I wish I remembered 
>> the details ... a tale about how he managed to get Durward Hoag's sister, 
>> who worked in the same store,  caught in a waste basket ... butt into it 
>> ... in such a way that the poor lass was unable to get out without help. 
>> One of the joys of small towns is everyone knows everyone.
>> 
>> Thanks guys for posting the item on that single truck car.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
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